Paulos of Kyrenia

Life

Metropolitan Paulos was born on November 21, 1945 in Larnaca, Cyprus. He attended the English School in Nicosia, Cyprus and the secondary school, Pancyprian Gymnasium, from which he received a certificate of graduation, the Apolyterion. After a term of service with the Cyprian national guard, he entered the Theological Faculty of the University of Athens in 1968 under a scholarship from the Church of Greece. He received his bachelor's degree in 1972.

Upon his return to Cyprus, he served the Church of Cyprus as a lay-preacher and catechist, including serving as a teacher at the Seminary of the Apostle Barnabas and at the English School. In 1977, under a scholarship he won from the Greek Scholarship State Foundation, he attended Oxford University in Great Britain where he studied history and theology of worship. After his graduation in 1980, he continued his doctorate studies at Oxford. After submitting his dissertation The Eucharistic Theology of Nicholas Cavasilas, he received his doctor of philosophy degree in 1985.

During the 1990s, Metr. Paulos represented the Church of Cyprus in the trial in the United States concerning the looting and sale of mosaics from the Kanakaia Church in Turkish occupied northern Cyprus.